by Ian Irvine
“Do not waste our time with posturing, Mendark,” said the Prime Just through shrunken lips. She looked old, sour and fearful. “Yours is the right, and we are hearing it, though to call a Great Conclave at this time shows only contempt for our ancient traditions. Just this morning I heard Thyllan’s complaint that you broke the truce. Make your case well, or you too may be charged.”
“First I would tell you of Yggur, and the foundations of his grievance against us in the Proscribed Experiments that went so wrong.”
“We know it,” said Nelissa, “and we also know your dubious part in it, and your penchant for rewriting history. Make your point.”
“Of his taking ruined Fiz Gorgo,” continued Mendark, though now he seemed to have lost the thread of his argument. “The slow… building of his forces, the excursions against his neighbors, until the whole of Orist was his, from the River Fiery to the Birquâsh Mountains, and all the peoples of Meldorin waited in dread. But here in Thurkad, protected by the mountains, we have laughed at him until this day. And why does he march? He blames the Council for all his troubles, though we did but…”
“Leave history to the plodding chroniclers,” Nelissa interrupted again, “or we will still be in Conclave when he batters down the doors. Get to the root of the problem. What help can the Mirror be to us? Why did Thyllan act as he did? Was he right to do so? Karan of Bannador, you are central to this. Give us your story. No, come down here,” she said, gesturing to the dais where Mendark still stood, as Karan began in an almost inaudible voice.
Karan began to rattle down the steps in her chains.
“Release her!” cried Mendark. “None may be shackled in the Great Conclave.”
Thyllan gestured to his armorer, who came down with a thick key in his hand and released the chains. They rattled onto the floor, then Karan limped down to the Just, her bare feet making no sound on the stone. There were red welts about her slender ankles, and her cheek was bruised purple and black. At the dais, within its dark, flaring hood, she looked terrified and lost.
None of those present, save Llian and Tensor, had heard the story of her escape from Fiz Gorgo as she told it then. Though she spoke woodenly, looking neither to right nor left, and in a distant voice, as if it had happened to someone else, none failed to be moved by her courage. The light gradually faded from the high windows as she told of the nightmare journey. She did not tell them about the waking of the Ghâshâd though; the memories of that night at the camp near Name were hidden too deep.
The Just listened carefully to her tale. There was a long silence when she was finished.
Tensor shook his head. “So brave, so clever and resourceful. How came you to betray us?” he said sadly.
“I betrayed the Aachim to save them from you. You are Pitlis come again.”
Tensor rocked on his feet. Then he cried, “You are mad, like your mother,” and dismissed everything she had said with a flick of his wrist.
“Is there not more?” Mendark asked gently. “Tell the Conclave what happened when Emmant came to your room.”
“Came here? I don’t remember that,” she said, looking confused. She had wiped it from her memory again. Mendark filled in the details, then Karan was released, but only to the front bench where the other witnesses sat.
Servants appeared with platters of food. When it was eaten and the empty trays borne away, and they sat with their bowls of red buttery tea steaming in front of them, Mendark rose again.
“The Conclave does not know the history of the Mirror.” He gave Nelissa a defiant stare. Her mouth seemed frozen, a down-hooking slash, but she signed to him to continue. What he said was similar to what Karan had told Llian a long time ago, before Shazmak, though Mendark took rather longer to tell it.
“The Council’s purpose,” he continued, “has always been to study the sciences of the enemy and make defenses against him. Many battles we have fought, many defeats suffered. Few victories, save for putting Rulke into the Nightland, and keeping him there. I believed the Mirror might advance our great project (his final banishment), and sent Llian of Chanthed to find Karan and bring her to Thurkad. I have no false hopes for the Mirror: it is like a book of a million pages, each torn to pieces and cast into a barrel. We may never learn to decipher it.” Mendark paused, but Nelissa merely waved tiredly.
“Thus we come to the essence. Thyllan threw me down from the citadel and seized the Mirror for himself. For himself,” he repeated. “My long service in the Council is known to all, but Thyllan is an upstart, an adventurer, a self-seeker. Are you fools, to trust the fate of Thurkad to one such as he?”
“Mendark twists the truth to suit his own case,” Tallia said in Llian’s ear. “Thyllan and he have long been warring.”
Thyllan leapt to his feet. “Mendark calls you fools because that is how he thinks of you. But you know the truth of the matter,” he boomed, looking at each of them in turn. “He plays games with words. The project is obsolete—Rulke dwindles. Each time we check him he is weaker, duller. Soon he will be so feeble that we can reach into the Nightland and crush him: then Santhenar will be free. May that day come while I am Magister. Do not be swayed by the sneers of Mendark. He shows how little he values your counsel.”
“No,” cried Karan wildly, “for Rulke touches me in my dreams. He is cruel, and strong.”
Thyllan looked at her pityingly. “Always it is the mad ones who are touched by the finger of the gods. You may have your dreams, but leave the affairs of Thurkad to those who dream only of its glory.”
“That is a deadly folly,” shouted Mendark. “Thyllan tells you what you want to hear, as Rulke shows you what you want to see.” But Mendark seemed to speak without conviction, and beside Thyllan he looked old and weak, and the Conclave began to turn away from him.
“The fool is old,” Thyllan roared, “trapped in the past! Santhenar is being refashioned and so must the Council be. The Mirror shows us the way. The secret of making portals lies within it—instant travel anywhere in the world. What power will Thurkad have then?”
Thyllan was magnificent, his hair wild and his eyes glowing, and he awoke in the breasts of all who listened a lust for power, a longing for great leadership, and a greed for the glory that would be Thurkad. “Under Mendark we declined, while he diverted himself with trifles. And where is the wealth of the Council now? The treasury is bankrupt, yet he idles away his dotage in luxury.” He flung out his arm at Mendark. “The result—Yggur is at our gate! We must meet him, destroy the threat and make Thurkad strong again, a great, proud city, the first city of Meldorin, even of Santhenar. Already our armies have hurt the enemy. We will cast him back into the stinking swamps of Orist where he belongs.”
Now he spoke quietly, cajolingly, as one who was not required to explain but did so anyway, out of his great regard for his subjects. “I expelled Mendark, it is true, but only for the good of Thurkad. He has so little honor that he broke the truce of the Conclave yesterday, sending his chronicler to steal into the citadel. Why was he really there? Not to set free this girl, as he pretended. He broke into Rulke’s archives. What was it he sought so urgently? Mendark has kept that from the Conclave. Something to his advantage, you can be sure.”
Mendark glared at Llian through bushy eyebrows, as though to say, see what you’ve done, you fool!
“Why, Mendark?” cried Nelissa. “What was Llian looking for?
“I cannot tell the Conclave that,” Mendark said. “I will say it only to the Arbitrator, in private.”
“One rule for Mendark, a different one for everyone else,” Thyllan said with venom.
Nelissa held up her hand. “I cannot force you, but it weakens your case immeasurably, Mendark.” And from that moment the mood of the room shifted perceptibly to Thyllan’s side.
“Who would you trust?” Thyllan roared. “Mendark broke the truce, showing the contempt he feels for me and for the traditions of Thurkad. But still I came to his Conclave to explain what I have done. Yes, I took the Mirror.
I am proud to admit it. It will be the foundation of our new project, and we will have the powers of the Charon. No longer will we struggle just to keep watch on Rulke; we will destroy him. His strength will be Thurkad’s. Would you give up such a destiny?”
A great sigh of yearning went through the Conclave.
Then the moment was shattered. “You know nothing of the Mirror,” came a high, cold voice from the balcony above. “You will never learn its secrets.”
The whole Conclave looked up. Standing at the railing was a small woman dressed in dusty traveling clothes, her long silver hair plaited and bound up at the nape of her neck. There was such a puissance, a strength of purpose about her that even the Prime Just quavered when she asked her name.
“I am Faelamor,” the woman said. “I did not die; I hid myself from the world. It was I who trained Maigraith to creep into Fiz Gorgo and take the Mirror. It is mine, and I will have it.!”
Tensor was on his feet, staring at her with such intensity that scarcely could he restrain himself from crying out.
Faelamor turned back to the Just. “You are wrong about the Mirror. It was only ever used by the Aachim as a seeing device, a trivial thing. In the Clysm Yalkara took the Mirror, that the Aachim laid aside, that they no longer dared to use, and bent it to her will, using it for seeing and spying. In her last years we fought many battles, she and I, but at last I was defeated, for she knew too many secrets. She found a warp in the Forbidding, made a gateway and fled, leaving the Mirror behind.
“So it is mine, the spoils of war. But I lay at the point of death for many years, and in that time the Mirror was hidden. When at last I regained my strength, I put it about that I was dead. I sought the Mirror, and learned that Yggur had found it.”
Her voice was cold and even and strong. She had no need of rhetoric. “The Mirror has no power, none at all. What it has, if you can read it, is knowledge, and many, many secrets, not least the one that you mention, the way that Yalkara made her gate. But none here can render it. Yalkara locked it, and there is only one key. I have that key.”
Tensor stood up. He raised his hand, and a still expectancy came over the room. He looked toward the Prime Just.
“Arbitrator, attend your office. There is no dispute that the Mirror is ours; we made it in Aachan in the depths of time and brought it here to Santhenar. No dispute that it was stolen from us by Yalkara. No other has the right to it.”
“What do you say to this?” asked Nelissa, turning to Faelamor.
“Mad Karan was right! Tensor would use it against Rulke and drag the whole world into war. The Aachim have declined to nothing and will not see it. They have forfeited their right.”
“We care for this world and will do nothing to harm it,” Tensor said vehemently. “Faelamor would smash the Forbidding, break open the Way between the Worlds and bare Santhenar to the violence of the void. Give the Mirror back. Our enemy is your enemy. We have a weapon against him that cannot fail.”
Tensor drew himself up, his dark eyes flashing, and he was glorious—his pride in the renascence of the Aachim was unshakable. Then he looked to Faelamor. “How came you here?” he said, in a great voice. “How did you get out of Shazmak?”
“Did I not say to you that you could not hold me?” she replied. “That your folly would set in motion the doom of the Aachim? So it proved to be, for the Whelm have found the secret way into Shazmak and it lies in ruins.”
“Ruins!” cried Tensor, in a voice that curdled the breath of those that watched. “What of my people?”
“I know of none who lived.”
“All dead?” said Tensor. “All dead!” His voice sank to a whisper. He stood for a moment, his head bowed, then suddenly he snapped erect, letting out a cry of agony that tore at Llian’s heart. Even Faelamor swayed back from the railing. He struggled with himself, staring into the empty air until the whole room quivered with his grief.
At last he mastered himself, and his deep voice was soft, but pregnant with menace. “How came the Whelm to Shazmak? Who showed them the way? Why would they do this?”
Faelamor’s voice was equally soft, and so low that the watchers could scarce hear it. “Why? Do you not know who the Whelm are, you who just boasted so loudly of the strength of the Aachim? They are Ghâshâd, your ancient enemies that Rulke twisted to his own purpose, long ago.”
“Ghâshâd!” Tensor looked as though he would burst with rage and terror. “Ghâshâd!” This cannot be borne.”
Karan cried out and squeezed her head between her hands.
“And who showed them the way?” Faelamor went on. “Who but the confessed betrayer of the Aachim? The one who was with the Whelm in Name before they went straight to Shazmak. The one who now pretends madness that she might escape punishment for her crimes. Never was one so young so treacherous.” She pointed an accusing finger.
“Karan! Karan of Bannador. She is the betrayer. See how she cries out in her guilt and shame. She showed them into Shazmak!”
“Never,” Karan said, weeping and trembling. “Never.”
Llian was on his feet, shouting, “No! No! It is not possible,” but Tallia gripped his shoulder tightly and pressed him back in his seat.
“That is not the way of the Conclave,” she said. “She will have her chance.”
Llian turned a bewildered face to her, terrified for Karan. “This is no Conclave, it is a trial, a farce, and she has no one to defend her.”
Karan faced her accuser, but it was clear to Llian that the madness was coming on her again. “Not I,” she wept, shaking and shivering. “I did not betray Shazmak, even under the torture of the Whelm.” The suppressed memory burst into her brain. “She” it was who showed them,” she said. “Faelamor did it! She promised me to Emmant. She gave him a charm to bind me. In return he showed the Whelm the secret path into Shazmak, and taught them to disable the Sentinels. He told me so, before I killed him.” Her face showed her horror. “Killed him…” Her voice trailed away.
Tensor looked at Faelamor.
“The girl is confessed to be a liar, a betrayer, a murderer,” said Faelamor. “To escape her crimes she pretends madness. Nothing she says can be believed.”
“It cannot be denied,” said Tensor heavily.
Karan’s eyes went wildly around the room. Mendark she saw, and Tallia, Tensor, Thyllan, others that she knew; but none would meet her eye. None believed her. Then she looked on Llian, through a mist, and there were tears running down his cheeks. Her only friend now.
There came a commotion outside. Nelissa had been speaking quietly with the other Just. Now she used her thin arms to push herself to her feet and stood at the end of the table, leaning on her stick, swaying.
She is weak and confused, thought Llian in horror. She will condemn Karan unheard. He looked up at Faelamor. She too was on her feet, gripping the railing.
Outside, even through the closed doors, they heard the pounding feet, the shouts, the cries, the hammering at the door. A guard drew it open and a tall man in the garb of a messenger crashed into the room. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath. His uniform was splattered with blood. He forced himself to his feet, staring around the room until his eyes lit on Thyllan.
“The war…” he croaked.
Thyllan clambered over the benches in his haste. “How goes the war, messenger? There is a setback?”
“The war is over,” the messenger said limply. “The army is utterly destroyed. Yggur is at the southern gate. There are too few to defend it. Thurkad is done.”
The shouting died away. The rain, which had been falling heavily all day, eased suddenly. Faelamor had come down from the balcony and stood near the Prime Just, but she seemed anxious and kept looking up. Tensor watched her with narrowed eyes. Now every eye turned to Nelissa, who still stood.
She spoke with effort, her voice rasping. “This is our Arbitration.
‘Tensor, your claim is valid. The Mirror is yours by right, but how can we give it back? The Aachim are destroyed
and our need is dire. Your warnings and the warnings of Faelamor are heeded, yet we know our enemy, and he is Yggur. We will keep the Mirror until the war is over and the enemy defeated. Thyllan, you acted improperly and we reprimand you. Yet we know you acted only for Thurkad. There is no penalty.”
The silence was absolute. No one moved or spoke. All eyes were on Tensor. The despair on his face drained away, replaced by an absent, lost look, but his jaw was set and his lips moved.
Mendark started, then leapt up onto the dais.
“There is power enough in this room,” he cried out, “to told back even the might of Yggur. Our weakness is his strength. Let us put aside our differences and unite against him. When he is defeated will be time to consider the Mirror.”
A murmur of assent went round the room. All eyes were on Tensor now. Faelamor edged closer; a tremor shook her small frame. Tensor’s shoulders slumped; he strained his lips into a broken smile, at last dipping his head in acquiescence. A little sigh came from Tallia. The tension eased.
“Karan of Bannador,” Nelissa said, without a trace of pity, “at another time you would be put away. But we are at war now, in great peril, and treachery breeds treachery. We can show no humanity to traitors. Take her outside,” she said, making a slashing motion to the guards. “Do it quickly.”
Mendark leapt up again. “This is not the will of the Conclave!” he shouted. “The charges have not been proven. She cannot be touched.”
“The Arbitration will not be challenged, citizen Mendark,” said Nelissa coldly. “And you are charged with contumely against the Great Conclave. Take him as well; hold him below. The Conclave is ended. Go now, salvage what you can.”
